# Can aromatic pipe tobacco go bad?



## tzilt (Nov 20, 2007)

I had opened a new tin of a certain aromatic the other night. The can seemed old and it smelled a little off and funky...but it was a funky flavor to begin with so I sorta shrugged it off. I smoked a bowl that night. All was well and good and I went to bed without any complaints.

Next day...I was sick. Like 24 hour flu sick. Stayed home from work and everything.

Coincidence? Or can pipe tobacco go bad? More specifically, can the casing/flavoring go bad and give you food poisoning...errr, smoke poisoning.

I will withhold the name of the blend to protect the innocent (or guilty as the case may be).

FULL DISCLAIMER: I take our daughter to daycare 2 days a week so that is probably a much more likely explanation of where I caught a bug. Still, the question lingers as I glare at the tin on the shelf every time I walk past it.


----------



## IHT (Dec 27, 2003)

i opened up my first big tin of MacBaren Vanilla Cream about a couple years before i actually started smoking from it often. it stayed the same over those couple of years.
i also had some ceramic jars that held my old cheapy B&M bulk aromatics. i cleaned them out last fall, and they had tobacco that was close to 7 yrs old still inside, smokeable even.

i've never had it happen, so i can't say for sure.
what blend was it, cuz maybe that's the flavor/aroma it's suppose to have.


----------



## tzilt (Nov 20, 2007)

Peterson's Sunset Breeze. 

I know that it is supposed to be a fruity, amaretto flavor...but it seemed to have a funky smell on top of that. 

Maybe its just a funky smelling tobacco and I happened to get sick the next day. Whatever the case is, it will be a while before I try any Sunset Breeze.


----------



## Guest (Dec 3, 2007)

Question really is, can aromatic pipe tobacco ever go good?








My bet is the childcare. Been passed a many a thing from those places.


----------



## paperairplane (Nov 8, 2007)

I don't think a casing could 'spoil' in the sense of food poisoning... I would think that to get you sick the tobacco would have to have mold growing on it or otherwise been contaminated by an outside source.


----------



## EvanS (Dec 29, 2006)

paperairplane said:


> I don't think a casing could 'spoil' in the sense of food poisoning... I would think that to get you sick the tobacco would have to have mold growing on it or otherwise been contaminated by an outside source.


this is where I was gonna go with this. But beware, I would suspect that mold could be actively growing in your tobac but NOT be obvious without close inspection. Maybe give it a close look tzilt


----------



## tzilt (Nov 20, 2007)

EvanS said:


> this is where I was gonna go with this. But beware, I would suspect that mold could be actively growing in your tobac but NOT be obvious without close inspection. Maybe give it a close look tzilt


I will, but it will be a little while before I can tolerate the smell of that stuff again. 

As I recall, it looked fine, but then, I wasn't specifically looking for mold.


----------



## IHT (Dec 27, 2003)

Root said:


> Question really is, can aromatic pipe tobacco ever go good?
> 
> _IHT - too damn funny._
> 
> ...


in the quote.


----------



## DubintheDam (Jun 5, 2007)

I would say it's coincidence, they say we're exposed to all sorts of bugs all the time, we just don't notice it.

But I think this highlights an important point, what is the best way to keep your pipes sterilized? I don't clean my pipes with alcohol after each smoke, just after 5 or 6, I do always run a pipe cleaner through, and wipe off with a cloth which I renew every couple of weeks or so. But I would really like what ideas people have about pipe hygiene. Do we wash our hands each time we fill a bowl? Are we just spreading more germs when we wipe of with a cloth etc. etc


----------



## tzilt (Nov 20, 2007)

DubintheDam said:


> But I think this highlights an important point, what is the best way to keep your pipes sterilized? I don't clean my pipes with alcohol after each smoke, just after 5 or 6, I do always run a pipe cleaner through, and wipe off with a cloth which I renew every couple of weeks or so. But I would really like what ideas people have about pipe hygiene. Do we wash our hands each time we fill a bowl? Are we just spreading more germs when we wipe of with a cloth etc. etc


I thought about that when I bought a few estate pipes from ebay. I wasn't too worried about catching a 30 year old cold virus, but wondered if it were possible, even if unlikely, that other nastier bugs might survive inside of a pipe stem. TB, meningitis, whooping cough, disco fever?

I would guess no, it doesn't seem like a very hospitable place after sitting around and drying for even a few weeks, much less years. But I still felt a lot better having soaked the stem in isopropyl.


----------



## solafid3 (Jul 4, 2006)

I randomly received a tin of Peterson Sunset Breeze, and it smelled like playdough. So, I would say that it was the tobacco and not the fact that it was bad...


----------



## JAK (Oct 10, 2007)

I wouldn't imagine you would need to sterilize your pipe stem if your the only one using it. You don't sterilize your toothbrush (I am guessing), I can't imagine a pipe stem would pick up that much bacteria just sitting in a rack.


----------



## replicant_argent (May 13, 2006)

While I am in the "daycare sick" camp, I wonder what the casings of many blends consist of? Oil based? Alcohol bases? Water based? While many extracts used in the culinary world are more oily, such as the citrus based flavorings, I wondered how the oils interact with the oils in a particular tobacco, or blend over time.


----------



## JAK (Oct 10, 2007)

Mainly alcohol and water based, from talking to a blender in portland.


----------



## tzilt (Nov 20, 2007)

so the propylene glycol is for moisture only? not to carry a flavor?


----------



## IHT (Dec 27, 2003)

tzilt said:


> so the propylene glycol is for moisture only? not to carry a flavor?


correct.
it's the same sh*t they tell you to put on cigar humidor foam. it's like it never evaporates.


----------



## paperairplane (Nov 8, 2007)

also, if you were already exposed to a bug - from the aforementioned daycare / biomedical weapon lab - smoking may have further aggravated your symptoms and increased the speed of the onset of symptoms

I mean - it's not like tobacco is an antioxidant...

As for pipe sterility - most bugs won't make more than a week on their own. Brandy kills some, Scotch kills most, 151 kills many and bleach kills all.


----------

